Old Holborn

“To be honest, I expected a priest,” I told him as he dunked the second of my Custard Creams into his tea.

“You’d be surprised how often I get that,” the vicar smiled before biting into his beverage-soaked biccie. “That film did us a lot of damage.”

“So, no ‘power of Christ compels thee’? No spinning heads?”

“No split pea soup, either.”

Truth be told, I was relieved to get an Anglican. A left-footer would have sniffed out my forty-per-cent proof and left the room stinking of Old Holborn. Still, I had my doubts.

“But you’ve done this before, yes?”

“What makes you think I’d be faking it?” He reached for yet another of McVitie’s finest. “I’ve dealt with all three varieties. Poltergeist, projection and apparition.”

“Any mice?”

His smile turned thin. “No. No mice.”

#

If you didn’t know already, I’m a private investigator. You can have whatever image of that you want in your head. Chances are, it’s wrong. There is no secretary with a long-suppressed romantic infatuation, no war wound, no anti-authoritarian chip on each shoulder.

But I do have a fifth-floor office, a bottle of medicinal hooch, a second-hand couch, a rapidly decreasing supply of Custard Creams and an infestation of ghost mice.

Most of my work is marital, which means the majority of my clients are wives. Distraught, nervous wives. The presence of rodents, whether corporeal or phantom, does nothing to inspire confidence. At least the flesh and fur variety scamper from hole to hole. These spooky squeakers float in through solid walls, levitate along the back of my couch then vanish, and I don’t mean figuratively.

#

“Are you much of one for cheese?” the vicar asks, wet crumbs speckling his clerical shirt.

“Who isn’t?” I reply.

“You may have to give it up for a while.” He wipes a smudge of fondant from the corner of his mouth. “They go crazy for the cheddar.”

“I thought that was a myth.”

“These aren’t actual mice,” he explains. “They’re spectral projections, fond of cheese because they’re supposed to be. Deprive them of dairy products – ”

“And they’ll be weak enough for you to work your magic, eh?” I laugh.

His response comes with a frown. “Something like that.” I’m not sure if I’ve insulted his professionalism or he’s troubled by the empty plate.

I don’t mention my pack of Bourbons.

#

Like his favoured biscuit, our Anglican has two aspects to him. Yes, he’s an exorcist but he also works as a necromancer, which is how I’ve ended up with a zombie cat. An undead mouser, summoned from the pet cemetery, capable of clawing mystic meeces into pieces within seconds. As a result my office now stinks of rotting pilchard. Distraught, nervous wives don’t like that either.

I’d have been better off with Old Holborn.